First of all, note that I am a registered owner of a shrink-wrap copy, product ID number aa8217b18a6ca871, but not only is your product broken, but your Web site is as well, so I can't request installation support on-line. Luckily, I'm not a newbie. I downloaded updates-RHEA-1999:045.img boot-RHEA-1999:044.img pcmcia-RHEA-1999:044.img And then proceeded to install on my Dell Inspiron 7000 Laptop. The first problem is that if I use either the "pcmcia" or "boot" images, and enter "text updates" as the advisory states, the boot process hangs at a line saying /sbin/loader It only boots into the installer works if I use "text updates expert" or "text updates text". Then, using the pcmcia boot image, since I'd like to set up my network card during install, it goes through, reads the updates, lets me select packages, but then immediately throws a Python trace-back when it tries installing the first package "Electric Fence". I believe the traceback was in todo.py or somesuch. So I try the regular boot image, and that finally works. Once installed, it's OK, but from an installation standpoint, RH 6.1 was and continues to be an inexcusable mess.
We have seen a couple of situations where there is a race condition on the loading of the updates disk. It is triggered by having the cdrom in the drive while loading the updates image. The workaround is to boot the machine (using the pcmcia.img in this case) and then tell the installer that you would like to install from the cdrom, at which time the installer will prompt you to insert the cdrom. This will prevent the hang that you are seeing at /sbin/loader. As for the traceback that you are seeing, I would need to see details of that in order to diagnose your problem.
I second this bug. I suggest you post the workaround to this race condition to the page that has the update to anaconda. There are a number of bugs that are duplicates of this, by the way, including: 6708, 587, 6723, 7089, etc.